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esponsibilities of business organisations towards their many stake holders, not just to their key stake holders like important groups of shareholders and key managers, but also to others like employees, buyers, suppliers, bankers, regulatory authorities and general members of society (Voien, 2000). Business organisations in the free market system in the past had only one objective, the making of profits. Milton Friedman (1994) has famously gone on record to state that managers of business organisations were responsible only for maximising the wealth of their organisations and share holders and that all other considerations were essentially subordinate to such objectives (Voien, 2000). Such opinions are very obviously politically incorrect in the modern day Anthony Giddens influenced 'middle way' environment, and all business organisations now profess to be profit oriented and socially responsible; corporate citizens with specific responsibilities towards all their stake holders, including the members of the communities with whom they are involved, and to the larger environment (Voien, 2000).

Such CSR obligations enjoin modern day business organisations to (a) desist from actions that may be directly or indirectly harmful to the various individuals and organisations in contact with them, (b) maintain the highest standards of financial and ethical probity in their dealings, and (c) preserve high levels of transparency regarding their working, within and outside their organisations (Voien, 2000).

Whilst CSR is an organisational construct and concerns the behaviour of business entities, the implementation of CSR actions very obviously occurs through the agencies of managers, working in their individual and collective capacities (Voien, 2000). CSR obligations thus call upon all responsible managers to assume high levels of professional, personal and corporate ethics in their personal and professional roles (Voien, 2000).

It also needs to be mentioned at this stage of the report that directors of business firms like Shell, in which management is separated from ownership, have both agency and fiduciary responsibilities towards their organisations (Gupta, 2003). They are expected to act honestly, transparently and for the benefit of their principals and their organisations in the conduct of their organisational responsibilities (Gupta, 2003).

The actions of the executives at Shell need to be understood and viewed from these perspectives (Gupta, 2003). Reports of the company reveal that much of the booking of such 'proven' reserves had occurred at the instance of Watts, who had the reputation of being aggressive in such activity and the continuance of a tussle between him and Vijver on the quality of reserves (Gupta, 2003). Both Watt and Vijver moreover knew that the booking of reserves was not substantiated by the guidelines framed by the SEC and that the information on reserves that had been disclosed to the SEC was substantially different from the information possessed by them (Gupta, 2003).

Why, in such case, were reserves claimed as proven, when the company had information to the contrary? The answers to such questions are not pleasant (Gupta, 2003) (Moore, 2004). In the first case, the present success and future prospects of oil prospecting and exploratory companies is strongly related to the quantity of its proven reserves (Gupta, 2003) (Moore, 2004). Greater prove